are the pharoahs of ancient egypt arabs or black africans?

Question

I'm a little bit lost on the identity of the ancient egyptians we hear so much about. can anyone help me out?

Answer 1

No one can precisely know from where did the ancient Egyptians came from (no body can assure that they lived in Egypt before making their civilization)

The only sure thing is that they first lived away from the Nile valley feeding on plants and animals till the rain stopped, then the plants didn't grow and the animals ran away looking for food.

The ancient guy had to move to the Nile valley where he knew agriculture then the civilization began.

After the civilization began, the habitants were called Egyptians but before civilization ... no one knows

Answer 2

Rather than offering up my own biased opinion, i'm just going to wait to see what answers roll in and read any articles that are attached Superior IQ: Can you provide links backing up your statements or are you simply blowing hot air. I can say Einstein was Black, without a link to back it up, for all anyone knows that is my opinion EDIT: Africa has had more than just one civlization, it's just that Egypt was the most well-known. Black Africans , who also played a part in Egypt, have had the Nubian, Ghana, Mali, & Songhay empires The Nubian civilization arose around the same time the Egyptian one did, but they did not reach the same heights

Answer 3

The ancient Egyptian empire lasted up to 3000 years, there would have been many different coloured people, and rulers, in that time. I saw a documentary where some scholars suggested that the sphinx had ******* facial features.
The Nile has been supporting organised civilisation for over 10,000 years, and probably smaller tribal cultures well before that.
Wikipedia has a good article on it.

Answer 4

The short answer is that the ancient Egyptians were Egyptians - that's how they identified themselves. Modern racial categories are not only anachronistic when applied to the past but nearly all scientists and scholars no longer believe that race is a biological reality. Rather, race is culturally determined and what makes a person a certain race or the identification of what race a given person or people are may and often do change depending on context.
The Arab conquest and various conquests before it did not completely depopulate Egypt and replace the population with Arabs or any other cultural/ethnic group. The Arabic language and the religion of Islam were adopted over a span of a few centuries after the conquest of Egypt, but there was never an enormous population of Arabs entering into Egypt and they tended to remain primarily in the Cairo area.
It's also worth noting that much of the Coptic Christian population, which makes up about 6-8% of the modern population of Egypt can, for the most part, trace their heritage back to what I suppose you'd call "ancient" Egypt. Copts are not easily distinguishable from most other Egyptians based solely on physical appearance.


There was a great range of physical appearances in ancient Egypt, much like there is in modern Egypt as the general physical characteristics have probably not changed all that greatly - there have been new population groups introduced, but most scholars feel that their influence has been fairly small and gradual and new population groups have been moving through Egypt since humans first arrived there.

The ancient Egyptians were African, as Egypt is in Africa. "African" is frequently conflated with "black" especially in the US and Europe, despite the vast range of physical appearance, including skin tones and facial features among various indigenous African groups. The ancient Egyptians had a variety of skin tones, roughly similar to those seen in Egypt today - that is, ranging from relatively light skinned/tan to very dark skinned, with hair that is straight, curly or very curly, noses that range in shape and eyes that are brown, blue, grey, or green. This is a standard phenotype for most North Africans.

There was population movement into Egypt despite it's relative isolation from both father south in Africa and from western Asia that contributed in a slight way to the external physical characteristics of the general population.

Ancient Egyptian art had certain conventions for depicting Egyptians as well as other population groups. Egyptian males are typically shown as red or reddish brown, women and old people of either gender in a yellowish shade, Nubians as black, and Asiatics as yellow. This may not have always reflected the reality of individual appearance as most of these depictions were not intended as portraits.

As a scholar, I don't think the Egyptians were "white", but I don't think that they were "black" in the common usage either - I think that they were Egyptian. I think, based on evidence from their own texts, artistic representations, etc., that they defined themselves as "Egyptian" in opposition to other groups. I don't think that you can apply modern categories with their own baggage to the past and I don't think that it serves any worthwhile purpose to "claim" an ancient cultural group as one's own without a wealth of evidence. I study ancient Egypt because I find it interesting, not because I feel that I need to support a modern social-political ideology and to be frank, at times I get a little tired of the ongoing arguing because I think that it distracts from the really interesting parts of Egyptian culture and because I don't think it should matter what box on a census form an ancient Egyptian would check. I say again, they were Egyptian - and that's all that should matter.

I've written a great many answers on Yahoo on this topic arguing against both those who argue that the Egyptians were "white" and those who argue that they were "black." Again, as I mentioned above, it is anachronistic to apply modern categories to the past as those those categories and definitions had the same meaning or were even conceived of in the past. It is true that a number of early European scholars were not willing to attribute the Egyptian civilization to indigenous African people, but this view has changed and no responsible scholar would attribute the ancient Egyptian civilization to white Europeans and not only because (again, as stated above) such racial categories are not taken to be particularly meaningful or "real" in a concrete biological sense.

Answer 5

Ancient Egypt was invaded/settled by numerous groups throughout antiquity and it would be difficult to settle on one race. The only Egyptian ruler whose heritage I know for certain is Cleopatra's- she was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers, who were originally Greeks; upon the death of Alexander the Great, his generals divided up his conquered territories because he had no heir and Ptolemy took Eqypt, founding the Ptolemaic dynasty of rule.

Answer 6

they generally are considered north African, a combination of "Arab", and light skinned African.

Genetically they had mixed with a lot of races including Europeans. the last Egyptian rulers were more Greek or roman than their older ancestors.

Answer 7

The original Pharaohs were undoubtedly Nubian (black). But, through many conquests and trade with hundreds of other peoples the look of the Royalty in Egypt changed. It only makes sense since Africans are the original inhabitants of Earth, this has been proven genetically. But let us not lose sight of the wonderful diversity of all the people God has made.

Answer 8

Arabs by the looks of them.

Answer 9

neither. their ethnicity along with their language is hamitic or afro-semitic. they are more closely related to the berber popluations of algeria and morrocco.

Answer 10

They were Egyptians, period, but maybe they came from another planet, too.